One Last Day of Freedom

Today I slept until 11:30. This is really not like me; last year, I was up at 7:00 every morning to go get breakfast at the Harcombe dining hall with my roommate. To my little sister: I now know how you feel, sleepy head. What makes 11:30 an interesting time to awake is the fact that we had a meeting today at 12:00. So thanks to Denver for getting my sleepy self up. In our meeting, we chose our household duties for the semester. Duties included kitchen assistant, kitchen cleanup, gardener, lockup, etc. Though I was really hoping to get gardener (I did, after all, run a landscaping company for 7+ years and quite enjoy the activity), all of the slots got filled for this and I settled for being the “day trip guy.” To the best of my knowledge, I will be keeping track of everyone to make sure that we leave no one behind and the like.

After an invigorating lunch,  a group of us up and left for the beach at Nervi. The beach (or perhaps I should say the ocean) was absolutely beautiful! The “beach,” which was recommended by one of our professors for its senographic qualities, was hardly a beach at all – more of a rocky outcropping whose shape created a natural cove with still, clear water revealing the texture of the rocks below. Shortly after we all waded into the water, a local informed us, in clear English, that the octopi liked to hang out in places like this. Thanks man. Whether he was pulling our legs or not, I’ll never know, but a lot of the girls kept this at heart most of the time we were there. My biggest fear was stepping on a sea urchin. Ouch.

We swam out a ways through the shallow, waist high water to the rocky outcropping visible in the picture. There, we sat for a few minutes and experienced what the natural cove had hidden from us before - the absolute power of the ocean's waves. As waves swelled up, we could feel the water being sucked out from under us and lunged backward, only to have the wave come crashing down upon us, shoving us foward like rag dolls.

We eventually made our way over to a shelf that dropped off into the open water. It was surprising how easily one could float in this water - so salty. After a bit of treading, and a few people testing how far out the other could go, most of us settled on the shelf - still in the water, but only mid-calf deep. Nonetheless, the waves still had a hold on us. Just before we decided to leave, a good sized wave came in as I was sitting on this natural shelf. This particular wave was stronger than the previous ones and sucked me out toward the end of the shelf. In the headstrong nature of men, I decided to try to fight back and hold myself from the force of the wave. In the unwavering power of nature, it didn't work. Here I am, legs way out in front of me and arms tucked way behind still trying to hold on, and here comes the wave. CRASH. And so did I. Up I go, legs flailing, arms still gripping (or at least trying), and head spinning. A small cut on the hand is my only battle wound, but still the score remains: nature, 1; Tyler, 0.

A voyage back to the villa and a cool shower, and then it was dinner time. Pasta and meatloaf and veggies. And some of the freshest fruit I have ever enjoyed. Apples, bananas, peaches, grapes, watermelon, so hard to choose.

Directly after dinner, we had an our first day of the Italian Crash Course with Barbara, an Italian professor at Clemson. We learned the basic phonetics – when “c” is pronounced as “ch,” “s” as “z,” and so forth. We also got some basic vocab, some of which I will share for your viewing pleasure:

     -Buongiorno (bon-jour-no): Hello (formal)

     -Ciao (chow): Hello

     -Grazie (grat-ze-a): Thank you

     -A presto (aah pre-sto): See you soon

Another thing that I learned is that apparently the name “Tyler” doesn’t exist in the Italian language. So when I said to the teacher, “Sono Tyler,” she quickly responded with “Tyler doesn’t exist!” I found this quite funny. Apparently I don’t exist in Italy ha. So, I have to think of a new “Italian” name. If you have any good suggestions, feel free to post them.

A presto.

-Tyler